


The Beauty Is

by AKA_47



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AKA_47/pseuds/AKA_47
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Will didn’t feel like a father. He felt like a spectator. He was watching Mac change, watching their son struggle but live, fight, and he was in awe, but he couldn’t make himself do any more than watch."<br/>Mackenzie and Will's little boy is born  months early and Will is terrified to hold such a fragile baby, but with Mackenzie's help Will realizes that he has the strength to be gentle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beauty Is

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by the fact that I was born 3 months early. Clearly, I survived and so will their little boy. All of the names they talk about are taken from the social security website of popular names, and I used google to try and figure out what Mac's due date would have been (so if it's really off, blame google not me). The actual day the baby is born is just an estimation of how early I was. The title comes from a song in the musical Light in the Piazza and I've included a little bit more of my life story (as pertains to this story) below.

Two pounds. Will turned it over and over again in his mind, trying to make sense of the figure, trying to conceptualize it. Roughly the weight of a quart of milk. _War and Peace_ weighed that much. There were probably a whole number of things that he’d held in his life that were that size, but he never could have imagined that his son would be so small. He couldn’t even hold him, couldn’t even feel what two pounds felt like spread over a little body. His son (who didn’t even have a name. He was so early and he and Mac were still arguing about it, and he might die without a name, but, no. He couldn’t think about that now) was completely obscured by tubes, wires, needles. One of the machines blared, alerting the nurses that he’d stopped breathing _again_ and Will felt his heart stutter. Two pounds also meant tiny lungs that couldn’t get enough oxygen.

The too bright lights of the NICU, the alarms blaring in his ear, made it impossible to deny reality, desperate though he was to do it. He lurched to his feet, eyes dry but burning with phantom tears he was just too exhausted to even manage.

“He needs a name,” he announced in the doorway of Mac’s hospital room. She wasn’t crying either. Fear consumed too much of her. She nodded, patting the end of her bed. He sat down, but his whole body thrummed with anxiety and he fidgeted. She laid her hand on his where it toyed with the edge of her blanket. He forced his fingers to still under her touch.

“Noah?” She asked in the same quiet voice she’d adopted since their son was born, like she was walking through a dream.

“He’s not building an arc.”

“He’s a baby, Will. He’s not doing anything. Arc building doesn’t happen until _at least_ 16.” She tried to smile and he forced himself to try too.

“Logan?” He asked, scrolling through a list of names on his phone.

Mac made a face. “Like Wolverine? No.”

He looked at her, surprised. “No, not like Wolverine. How do you even? Never mind.”

She shrugged. “I like Hugh Jackman.”

Mac dropped her head against his shoulder. She wanted so badly to be able to joke with him, wanted to focus on anything other than the fact that her little boy was trying desperately to _live_ just a few feet down the hall. No matter how many times she tried to talk to him like everything was normal she felt the weight of it press down on her heart. “Ethan.”

Will spoke into her hair. “I like it.”

“What does it mean?”

Will pulled away from her so he could check his phone. He smirked as he looked down at the screen.

“What?” She asked, craning to see.

“It means strong.”

Her lips trembled as they met his. Their little boy had a name.

\----

The due date was January 23rd. Not that Will had it marked or anything. Not that the whole office knew it. Not that he’d worried about how cold it would be when they brought their son home. Not that he had brought the fact up to Mac at least a dozen times. Except he had. He knew that there were men who worried less, paid less attention. He wasn’t one of them. Mac had complained about it more than once in a way that told him she wasn’t complaining at all, just keeping up appearances. She couldn’t be seen going soft on him.

It was 7:52 when Jim came in to tell him. October 26th, 7:52 pm. He wasn’t sure when he’d managed to look at the clock, but the time was burned in his memory. Jim came to tell him that Mac was on her way to the hospital and he didn’t need the concern etched on Jim’s face to tell him that something was very wrong. To his credit, Jim didn’t even mention the show, which was good because Will couldn’t have cared less about it in that moment. Mac asked him later in the hospital between contractions, just for something to say, something to distract from the terror of the fact that their baby was far too early. Elliot took the broadcast, he told her, not really caring if it was the truth.

\----

“You won’t hurt him,” Mac assured him for the hundredth time. Will looked at the baby in her arms, miniscule, wrinkled, a cap covering his head. Mackenzie adjusted it with careful fingers, avoiding the tubes. “Ethan.” She murmured his name, rocking ever so slightly, uncurling his fist with a finger.

She’d been terrified when she was separated from Ethan, unable to see him. Lost. She’d been given a task, but couldn’t fulfill it, had to leave it to doctors and nurses and machines. Now, holding him, she seemed at ease, even if he was fragile. She’d pushed aside whatever fears she had, setting herself instead to loving him, learning him.

“Mackenzie,” Will sighed, “he stopped breathing ten minutes ago. What if it happens again? I can’t hold him.”

Mac tore her gaze away from Ethan, her eyes concerned. “And I was holding him 10 minutes ago. Do I look scared? Nothing’s going to happen if you hold him, Will.”

Will was more lost now than ever. When he could leave the care of Ethan to doctors, when he couldn’t touch him, _he_ didn’t have to worry about hurting him. But with each passing day Mac was becoming more and more insistent, worried more that he never held him. He was just too small.

“It would feel more real if you held him,” she tried again. “He’s not going to disappear.”

It was a nice euphemism, but Mackenzie knew as well as he did that he wasn’t afraid of their son disappearing. He wasn’t out of the woods yet, still tiny with immature lungs and they couldn’t even guess at the extent of brain damage that might have happened as a result of lack of oxygen to the brain. It was all too possible that Ethan would die and he couldn’t imagine rocking him like Mac was, talking to him, loving him and losing him. _You already love him_ , Mac’s eyes said. _There’s nothing you can do about that now. Get to know him._ He looked away. Sometimes he really hated how much she could say without words.

“Daddy’s being silly,” Mac whispered to the baby, brushing her lips against his cheek, barely a touch. “That happens a lot. He’ll come to his senses eventually.”

Not for the first time Will wondered what it was about women that made them adapt so easily. From the second Ethan was born Mac was a mother, before that really, but she held him like she’d done it for years, soothed him as the alarms went off, barely reacting herself. Her hands seemed made to hold him, exceedingly gentle in a way he hadn’t seen before. There was a strength in her he hadn’t seen either, one that told him she could handle whatever the future held. He couldn’t stop watching her, seeing her like that.

Will didn’t feel like a father. He felt like a spectator. He was watching Mac change, watching their son struggle but _live, fight_ , and he was in awe, but he couldn’t make himself do any more than watch.

\----

“I’m sorry,” Will spoke into the darkness and he felt Mac shift onto her side, laying her chin on his chest.

“It’s been two weeks, Billy. Eventually he’s going to come home with us and I don’t want that to be the first time you hold him.”

Will felt the familiar frustration building up in him. “I know. What’s wrong with me?” His anger left him breathless and she smiled a little sadly at him.

“Nothing,” she assured him, hugging herself to him. “You’re scared. You don’t want anything bad to happen to him, but you know you can’t do anything about it. But, Will, nothing bad is going to happen. I can feel it. He’s going to be all right.”

“I don’t know how…” He trailed off, lifting his hands up to illustrate his ineptitude.

She smiled in earnest this time, reaching over him to turn the light on. “Sit up,” she commanded. “Lay your palms up.”

“Mac, what--”

“Just do it.” He obeyed and she slipped her hands on top of his palms, pressing down.

“It feels a little like that,” she explained at his confused expression. “Now, it’s okay to be strong, because he needs you to just hold him.” She took one of her hands out of his and ran a finger lightly against the lines in his skin. “Touch him just like this.” She cocked her head to the side, thinking. “Like you do when you trace my lips.”

He smiled at her and she turned her palm up, inviting him to practice. He drew a circle into her skin. “There.” She said when he’d finished. “You’re a natural. You don’t have to worry, Billy. You were made to be gentle, even if you don’t realize it.”

He took her hands, guiding them around his neck as he kissed her. “Thank you.”

“You’re going to be an amazing father, Will.”

“How do you know?” He tried to keep the desperation out of his voice, not to let her know how much he really needed her answer. She wasn’t fooled.

“Because you care.”

\----

There were things he’d missed by just watching. The exact shape of his son’s face, his tiny expressions, the newness of his skin as he brushed it with his fingers. He learned new things with each passing minute the baby was in his arms. He knew from the second he looked down at him that it had been pointless to deny that he’d loved him from the very moment he was born. The little boy in his arms was inexplicably and undeniably tied to his happiness, forever.

He worked to make his voice quiet, everything quiet and slow and careful. “Hi, Ethan. God, you’re small. That’s okay. I’ve got you. I’ve always got you.”

Will looked up at the sound of Mac’s hitched breath. Her eyes were shining and one hand covered her mouth while the other rested on his shoulder. She nodded in agreement.

“He’s gonna get cute, right?” He cast his gaze back to Ethan even as he joked, unwilling to take his eyes off of him for very long.

Mackenzie laughed, choked with tears. “He _is_ cute and the only reason I’m not hitting you right now is that you’re holding something pretty important to me.”

“Do you hear that?” He asked his son, “you’re mommy is not the nice one. Don’t let those eyes fool you.”

“Go back to being sweet or I’m taking him from you.”

He didn’t say anything for a while, just memorized the feel of his son in his arms, committing his features to memory, watching each precious breath, his chest rise and fall, rhythmic, constant, strong. He counted time by them, feeling like he could do it for the rest of his life and never cease to be amazed by the miracle of it.

“You won’t always be this small.” He spoke once the world had narrowed to just the two of them. “But even when you’re bigger, I’ve got you. I’ll always take care of you. You never have to worry about anything. I’ll always be there. I’ll always love you.”

They were the assurances he’d never gotten from his father, but always yearned for. Looking at Ethan, it was hard to imagine just what could stop a man from making such easy promises.

Mac knelt in front of him, looking from the little boy’s face to Will’s. Everything he would ever need was in front of him. The truth of it was enough to knock the breath out of his lungs. For the first time in a long time the past seemed a long way away and all he could think of was the future. The future with his _family._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a twin and my brother and I were born 3 months early. The fact that Ethan stops breathing actually comes from my brother. My dad wouldn't hold him because he was afraid and that's where I got the idea for the story. I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
